“Don’t think humans are the most successful animals”. The warning came during a biology lecture for undergraduates. The slide that accompanied this statement included a number of pictures representing different animal phyla; sponges (Calcarea and Silicea), squids (Mollusca), earthworms (Annelida), and starfish (Echinodermata). Center top was a picture of a beetle (Arthropoda). Humans were notably absent. The use of the word “success” hit me with the strength of Urus maritimus (polar bear, Phylum Chordata).

I know a number of successful people; few of them receive kudos commensurate to that designation. These are people who have pursued their passion and done so with no or minimal disruption to the world around them. The people I refer to are those that manage to have smiles on their faces as a result of adapting to their surroundings, those that thrive on fitting into the whole experience. They exude confidence in creating community while at the same time embracing the vulnerability of not succeeding. They employ a creative adaptation, and in so doing they include and nurture, abstractly and seamlessly giving back to those around them. And sometimes they fail. But without a doubt, they celebrate the diversity in their lives and do not feel the need to homogenize their surroundings in order to feel alive.

There is a single species of human (Homo sapiens, Phylum Chordata). One. There are approximately 12,800 named species of ants, close to 400,000 named species of beetles, and roughly 1500 different species of flies, and that is just a start. One species of human and we populate every corner of the planet, not through adapting to the environment, but by creating an artificial one. We as a species, manage to overlook all these ecosystems in favor of something that suits us.

Other organisms are forced to adapt. They must efficiently use available resources and adapt to their surrounding environment, or die. Pretty simple really. They are vulnerable to the influences of selective pressures. Many will not make it, in fact most won’t. Yet, in terms of shear numbers, it is a strategy that has worked far more successfully than any yet devised by humans. And it is one of the things that gives the world its personality, why there are differences, why we can say the community of organisms that live in the tropics is different than those that live in the deserts, why the group of species living on the tops of mountains are different than those living on ocean floors.

I like humans, really, and I fully appreciate that we live in the 21st Century. But my goal with this blog is to get people to lift their eyes, to see what they usually don’t. So sometimes as I stand outside looking in, it is hard to not hear the echo of Groucho Marx’s words when I look at the narrowness of my species’ success. “I don’t want to belong to a club that would accept people like me as a member.” (If I had my choice, I would be a sea otter (Enhydra lutris, Phylum Chordata). That’s another post though.)
So, here is the question; How did you adapt today? Not through manipulation but rather through interaction and absence of pride. And tomorrow, pretend you are an insect; the world can live without humans but would wither and decay without insects.